Hanging Structure for Salt Blocks, using proxy weights.

The afternoons are heating up out in the shop, so I’m glad I already figured out the nuts and bolts of mobile flying for the other side, and have knocked this out in the a.m. & early afternoon in three days. The later afternoon of Mon was spent transferring all the machine-made mask-letters to salt stone for sandblasting, and yesterday afternoon was geeked on the computer tweaking my info for an architectural firm that asked me to be their arts consultant for a local RFQ (that will be a new thing for me if we get the bid). Not working on the mobile allowed me just enough time to realize a way to keep the big 20′ arm that this side will fly on from getting smacked by the fragile salt boxes. This wasn’t a concern for the other side, as the bar drops down to it and it hangs below the bar. The problem of the bar rising into the boxes is mitigated by welding the D-Rings to the steel bars at a 90 degree angle to the bar for the final two Rings- this creates a T-Bar for the top bar as in the final picture, though I will likely let it fly the box up a bit more. All my other options were silly in comparison. I double checked the size of the D-Ring to the big 20′ bar in the other garage, and it was too small to fit the huge hook- I’d used all the big D-Rings on the other side of the mobile because I’d liked how beefy they looked and had forgotten that I needed to keep one over for this side- leaving me with a few dinky D-Rings. The last image with the hoisting webbing is where the big ring will go; I made an online order today and hopefully will have it by Fri or Sat. I also figured how to make hanging weights that will be fairly unobtrusive, and that I can easily change in and out to alter the angles for the final hang. In the first two images the buckets hang from long round-steel with an eyelet on each end that can be open and shut. I’ll weld a tiny D-ring to fat round-steel, cut to weights of 5 & 10 lbs. The fat weight round-steel will hang from the eyelet, and dangle next to the skinny round-steel that flies the salt box. It should go unnoticed. Another gidget to form out…